text:
Greetings, 47fans!
Been three years since our last post here, five-plus since those of the 1947 variety in particular. Of course post-47project there's been On Bunker Hill and In SRO Land and many other adventures. But now it's back to 1947–and why revisit that storied year of LA noir? LA Noire.
Unless you've been under a rock (a vaunted haunt, I'd say) you've likely heard of LA Noire. If not, here's the skinny. Rockstar Games (renowned for their Grand Theft Auto franchise, say) and game developer Team Bondi announce in September '06 that they intend to produce a video game set in the Los Angeles of 1947. Gamers drool over the prospective enormous open-world aspect and its MotionScan technology; we Old LA geeks get all excited about, of course, the prospect of shelving our Beta cassettes of The Turning Point and Hollow Triumph and taking a dérive through re-created 1947 LA. From there, we waited.
The years rolled on, drop dates came and went, but then, these things take time. Four years and change after that initial announcement, R*/Bondi announce Noire's in-store buy-em-up day: May 17, 2011. In the swell of excitement and promotion before the game's explosion onto the scene, the good folk of the gaming world go and call up those other mid-aught plumbers of the '47geist: us.
In short, I've played it.
Last Saturday, Richard Schave, Kim Cooper and I were led from the Roosevelt Hotel's sun-and-skin drenched poolside
up into one of its dark, curtain-pulled rooms. Said room's only salient feature? 60″ flat screen. Pleasantries are made all around and we get down to the business of playing LA Noire.
They had a lot of people there to play that day, in heavy rotation. Mostly gamers from fansites, whom I'm sure picked apart the roguelike procedural sandbox algorithms, about which I confess to know nothing. (Did play ToeJam & Earl in Panic on Funkotron all the way through in 1993 and said Ok, I've done that. Went boating once, too, and again, figured once was enough.) Kim's no gamer either. So we abjured the gameplay and I therefore can comment neither on LA Noire's authority as a "game" nor on how it succeeds in its mimetic vs. diegetic structure. I was there to look at stuff. Their company rep in our room gave us a half-hour (which we stretched into an hour) to tool around Old LA — an hour of incessant mumbles and rants that surely came off as so much demented logorrhea.
All of which I'll share with you now. Will endeavor to imbue it with some measure of coherence one notch above logorrhea; can't guarantee it won't be demented.
First thing I did was study LAN's greater map. It's an oblong affair, kind of a boomerang shape, roughly bordered by Franklin on the north, the river at the east, Olympic along the south, and La Brea at the west. Within these boundaries there are, I was told, eight miles of perfectly rendered roads to traverse. And I fully intended to put this topography to test in the limited time I had.
So we jumped into the world. Commenced inside Central Police Division, the 1896 "Old Central" at the SW corner of First and Hill (demolished in 1956, a year after Parker Center opened, natch). There was some ambient gametalk about how I was one Cole Phelps, former Marine and newly-minted LAPD detective, which was all fine and good when, as I ambled down some hallway, I glanced out of the side of my Phelpsian eye the view through the window and espied a great dusty promontory.
Oh, I knew it well all right. It loomed over First; the Hill Street Tunnel bored through it. That the game designers could get something that correct through some random dirty window, well, that bode well.
Above, aforementioned "dusty promontory" as seen from its dust down toward the police station of which I spake. Lobby card from Shockproof, 1949, author's collection
That hill is long gone, and I wanted to see it: without a thought I roughly pushed past the odd dirty desk and water cooler, shoving aside my fellow officer until at once, after a lifetime of waiting, I bolted out into the daylight. The 1947 daylight. Blinked my eyes in wonder. A red car trolley clattered past. Turned and peered down First at Austin's State Building looming in the distance. I'm not ashamed to say I found the moment absolutely thrilling.
Ran into the street, badged some broad in a shiny new Hudson, commandeered her car and set off for Bunker Hill, every synapse firing. Some semaphore dared raise its "stop" signal at me and I blew through the intersection, neatly clipping a Caddy, fishtailing onto the sidewalk, sending pedestrians scurrying. (All at once I could see the appeal of this thing.) But my car, and neurons, came to a screeching halt as I hit Second and Hill — for there, instead of roadbed running up to Olive, were only stairs alongside the tunnel.
Which was just…wrong. I gunned my Hudson up those steps anyway, made it about halfway before my transport chugged to a sad stop. Fine, I'd take in the Hill on foot. I ran up the rest of the staircase (without expending any actual energy or effort…doubling the appeal!) and turned to ask…where was the Astoria? This game's early promise was dwindlling rapidly. The Hillcrest had a butcher instead of its dry cleaners? This was not boding well.
The most-used phrase to describe LA Noire is "perfectly recreated." Now, let me say that I'm not trying to be needlessly critical, but this is criticism after all, and it's the only kind of criticism I do. A post such as this merely underscores that we at 1947p take our re-presentation of a world dear to our hearts with unyielding gravity. To put it nicely, omission of oft-photographed (disinclude Angels Flight Pharmacy? Really?) buildings is a bit perplexing. That the repetition of perplexing omissions was disheartening and maddening I trust is a given.
I queried some of the game guys afterward about why some landmarks might be missing, and they posited that it could be because Corporate couldn't secure the rights to images of those structures. A possibility, but not a probability. For example, back in Noire's LA, I cruised up Third to Grand. Looking north, at the NW corner, there stood 301/303 S Grand, AKA 725 W 3rd. Shots of this house are pretty rare. But across the street at the NE corner, there was no Nugent, nor, at the SE corner, was there the Lovejoy, which have both been captured to great degree. Thus it was with some trepidation I walked up to Bunker Hill Avenue — which wasn't there. It had been reconfigured as an alleyway. Bunker Hill Avenue is unusually, unreasonably important to Los Angeles, mid-Century especially; noir pictures were shot there, for example, The Castle was used in Kiss Me Deadly. If they'd asked me for any or all of my many rights-free vintage postcards of the Melrose, or unpublished kodachromes of the Castle, they coulda had 'em. (Don't even get me started on where they put the terminus of the Third Street tunnel.)
So I trudged back to town. At least I could ride Angels Flight down to Hill, right? Nope, in this world Angels Flight is stationary. I can plow a beautifully rendered Packard Deluxe Clipper 8 Club Sedan through three blocks of streetlights, but can't ride the arguably most iconic piece of Angelenic transportation 315 feet? With streets replete with DeSotos and crisscrossing streetcars, 1947 the height of its ridership, Angels Flight sits as motionless as it did during its down days. This too I brought up to one of the reps, and was told that what I was playing wasn't the final version, and that perhaps a running funicular was to be, but just, you know, not in this "build." I believe what he was attempting to connote was that I was playing an old version. So there's your caveat, dear reader: perhaps everything I'm saying is based on some outdated model. Perhaps everything I'm bitching about is being fixed right now.
Naturally my most stringent criticism was going to be reserved for Bunker Hill; ironically, it was Bunker Hill which let down the most.
Once I was back in Noire's downtown, my spirits lifted a bit. "Go to the Westminster!" chimed Kim, and I hotfoot-ed it down to Fourth and Main, and damned if that didn't restore the thrilling feeling I had at the start. I took in the pre-extruded metal facade at Cliftons (now being returned to its pre-1962 visage) and was tickled by the tiki torches blazing in the doorway of the beautifully rendered Clifton's Pacific Seas on Olive. Ambled amongst the palms toward the famous fountain in Pershing Square. The Rosslyn Hotel had her twin blade signs, just as she should. Standing at Sixth and Fig with the Gates over my left shoulder and the Richfield looming up above me was…something. The JESUS SAVES neon signs were where they should be, living large behind the library, and the Engstrum…the Engstrum. There I stood in front of the Sunkist and Engstrum with the Edison at my right. It was quite a moment. (Added bonus for the novitiate: backs to the library, a pop-up allowed us to access historical information about said Goodhue structure. These pop-uppy whatnots, suggested but not demanded, occur at the usual suspects across the City.) As an oil man by trade, my reigning interest was in motoring down to the gas holders the other side of Union Station. Those behemoths made my heart skip a beat. From there I sauntered like a flâneur up Seventh — Dodd and Richards row, pretty nice.
But it was the Spring Arcade…that really showed me the true virtue of the game. I was busy crashing Chryslers, gazing gape-mouthed as I pummeled pedestrians, blah dee blah, video game stuff, when I screeeee parked my car lengthwise across Broadway. Exited said car, walked with dedicated purpose across the street — traffic came to a halt, ladies in veils waved their begloved fists at me — and I stepped into the quietude of the Spring Arcade. It was a revelation. Deep into our maniacal race to experience all we could see in this recreated world, I was now in the Arcade sans crap electronics and discount socks: a place of peace and elegance, as anathematic to 1947 as it is to 2011. People of 2011 (that's you) can and should traverse what is LA's most sublime space. That you may imagine its former glory, courtesy of and via this game, is rather lovely.
Would that it were all hearts and rainbows, though. There were problems:
The Westminster lacked its trademark sunburst canopies. And consider the San Carlos: in the Noire version of '47 reality, the San Carlos exists, structurally, somewhere between its original "wedding cake" incarnation of 1911 and its 1930s cleanlining, i.e., there was an apparent misalignment in the matter transporter integrator/disentgrator device (shameless plug for the '58 version of The Fly) because here the San Carlos retains its Auditorium-era finials, though in a mutated streamline version. Weird.
Also, the Hippodrome has been depicted as a structure separate from the Westminster. Across the street was of course The Follies, which has here been mistakenly represented as a motion-picture house, instead of as a burlesque-eteria: its bump-n-grind 1947 reality would have actually made this landscape more noir. (I might add that in Noire's world LA's picture-houses, according to their maquees, featured the same few 1947 noir films, and ignored the dictate of Warner's showing Warners, RKO showing theirs, etc.)
Where was the Follies' neighbor Goodfellow's Grotto, touchstone of the time? And, to this day, along the backside of the Barclay, there exists a magnificent ghost sign, sad to see the gamefolk didn't record it — the IN Van Nuys hotel had become the Barclay a full decade before 1947: so, where was the thing? It's not like Team Bondi wasn't there to photographic it: we all followed the tale of their rummaging through the hotel. The Chocolate Shop was an empty lot. The Baltimore Hotel was missing its blade signage (crimininally dumpstered a decade ago), but, most shockingly, King Eddie was utterly absent. (Which is absolutely mystifying in that it stands there to this day in all its glory. Perhaps it's just not in this "build?") The Monarch was also plucked from the landscape. Odd.
Some examples. Here's a screengrab from their site.
We're looking up Fourth toward Olive. Now, while you're playing the game, you're very likely concerned with that guy shooting at you. But here, we treat background as foreground, so: the designers used an early image on which to render this scene. By 1947, the Hotel Clark Garage, right, had become the Center Garage. That mission-style building, background left, the Fremont Hotel, had a blade sign running down its east flank.
Now here's an instance where the designers used an image later than 1947 to design Noire:
We're careening up Fig, and in the distance, the Architects Building, but see those letters atop? They read "Douglas Oil" and weren't placed there until after Douglas purchased the building in 1959. Guess you should probably be more worried about the big scary car crashing into you, and all the flying sparks, but, well, we each have our own issues.
Again, there may be some bugs to be worked out. How was it that on my way up Main, St. Vibiana's was missing, but turn around and head south, and it appears? The same wonkiness held true with a trip down Fig, wherein the Architects Building is an empty lot; but, motor a couple blocks and crane your head around, there it is behind you. Perhaps these li'l bugaboos (I'm sure they just rasterized their RAM with too little ROM, or something) will've been worked out by the time they ship product. I hope so — these bits of motorized strangeness disorient and dislodge one from the moment.
You'd think we were done for the day, but KC & I, feverishly sweating blood, handing the controller to one another, and scaring our handler with the aforementioned glossolalia, had places to go. We tore down Wilshire — as much as I love the 60s Corporate Brutalism of DMJM's American Cement, its absence certainly put me squarely in the game's frame. But even with the Gaylord in the distance, Wilshire petered out before we hit The Ambassador. Yes, our first instance where we had come to The End of Our World. I don't play games; I drive around LA. So I don't take roadblocks lightly. But I was at the mercy of a higher power. Not the AA kind. The Thirteenth Floor kind.
So as I so often do (especially when confronted with a higher power), I went another way. Up Kenmore, or Arlington (another problem with this game — no street signs, not a one — should you want to know where you are, you have to jump out of gameplay and into a map) and into Hollywoodland. I could give just as detailed a description of Hollywood as I did for downtown (to which I did a disservice by not seeing a tenth of what I intended to) but I'll save that, I think. Something tells me this won't be the last of this nitpickery. Suffice it to say, for the time being, seeing Sardi's in the flesh, so to speak, was charming. That I went to bed that night replaying how I clipped a Chrysler Airflow and slammed my midnight blue '47 Lincoln Continental convertible into the NBC building…priceless. On the other hand, one of my mussitations while motoring along Sunset was "If the globe on Crossroads is spinning the right way, I'll buy this thing." Not only not the right way, but not spinning. At all. Like Angels Flight, it was stationary. And did I mention it wasn't a globe? Just a blue ball.
How apt.
And thusly we were done. I tossed the controller to the floor and breathed a bit.
Ushered back out poolside, where all was well-lit, well-oiled and eumorphous. I wanted to cry, Don't you know where you are? But I guess what I really meant was Don't you know where I've been? Richard drove us back to Lincoln Heights. I was in an impatient state of anxiety over his unwillingness to blow through intersections and use sidewalks as his motorway.
As we drove home, the streets were uncrowded, the sky was sunny. Just as it was in…LA Noire. Which raises the question — what? Los Angeles was famously congested in 1947. Moreover, 1947 LA was poisonously polluted. My synapses sprang back to life, whence came new questions: having only traversed the Noire landscape in daylight, what does nighttime look like? (Are the animated signs animated, e.g., the bowling neon on Vine or the bowling incandescent on Sunset? Do vespertine activities shift in form and function?) Is the Noire world racially accurate? (As I drive down Central to bop with the heads, how do the demographics shift? Or up Broadway into New Chinatown? If faces are actually Asian there, will they differentiate in any way from those in our ShÅ-tÅkyÅ?)
We wound through the streets. I closed my eyes and tried to keep close to 1947 LA. Traffic roared by, but it didn't sound quite correct. I mean, a Pontiac Streamliner 8 sounds like nothing else in the world. So my final muttering of the day was vedremo. Vedremo. Those Germans, they may have a word for everything, but the Italians, they only have words for those things that absolutely matter. A favorite of theirs, heard across pre-unification "Italy," was/is vedremo. It means we shall see. We shall see, indeed.
But I live now. It's been a couple days and I've cogitated a spell. If you've read this far, it won't shock you to hear that I don't cotton to anachronism. But Mr. Nathan, I hear you say, Renaissance art was the rebirth of antiquity, but you nevertheless routinely witness The Virgin in 15th c. Italian dress and the Four Fathers in Flemmish garb all the time. I would counter that the renovatio was about the remaking of a living culture through the interjection of Greco-Roman concepts of perfection, and if you want to continue your argument, I know, town clocks didn't strike in the ancient Rome of Shakespeare's Julius Ceasar either. Anachronism in the commission of art, is not only nothing new, but is common currency.
But I'm not writing about those. I'm writing about this. It purports to be historical, and when that happens, I'm on the case. I'm Cole-Fucking-Phelps.
Thus I am a detective, present day, but with retrocognitive disorder. Retrocognition is the concept that one can view a place and see into it its variegated layers of the past. While I may appear flippant on the subject, trust me, it's a difficult state of perception to harbor or describe. The German critic Walter Benjamin described the colportage phenomenon of space, wherein "we simultaneously perceive all the events which might conceivably have taken place here." But I don't see Los Angeles, historically, as collapsed space; I see it as an artichoke, where one must peel back layers to reveal its heart. But it's also an onion. Peel away its layers, find nothing inside, end up crying.
Neither 1947 Los Angeles nor its progeny LA Noire merely exist within the colportage; this game is being entered into the historiography of postwar Los Angeles. That canon is unbearably important (you know, to some of us), but who are its keepers? From March 2005 on, there was us at 47p. As has been discussed on this site, Ask the Dust didn't look quite right, and DePalma's 1947-fest Black Dahlia, released the year LA Noire was announced, shot as it was in Bulgaria, didn't look quite right either. Those two movies were of course seen by a sum total of eleven people. Of HBO's recent Mildred Pierce — tossing in a handful of palm trees and some awkward CGI couldn't change the quality of that New York light. MP was seen by about a million people. Rockstar's most recent venture, Grand Theft Auto IV, has sold twenty million units.
Noire shall then be the introduction for many to the wonderful world of 1947 Los Angeles, and as they learn it in its eidetic state, they are going to come away with a view of the City at a place in time that is almost, but not quite. If they learn it here first, then, when they subsequently see it presented accurately, they'll figure the simulacrum to be the true version. (If this paragraph incites just one discussion about teleology and metanarrative, that would be awesome. If it makes you think about the Bath Block, that would be better.)
Coleridge was all up in our grill about willingly suspending disbelief. As such, I'd like to think the onus was solely on me, infinitely forgiving the game designers, and overlooking the limitations of the media — but I can't. I understand that when I watch Life On Mars, set in the 70s, it's low budget; they can't remove every incorrect park bench and satellite antenna. That the Coens couldn't expunge some modern Carl's Jr. signage from their set-in-1980 No Country for Old Men, well, fine…their budget was a mere twenty-five million dollars. But LA Noire is total fantasy, drawn (literally) (no, not literally, because they "capture" these things, but anyway) from images, and its budget is fifty, maybe a hundred million dollars. So forgive me should I seem to hold these gents to unreasonably high standards. In layman's terms, I'm not sayin', I'm just sayin': the past has as its nature an irretrievability and should someone attempt to articulate it, they are opening themselves up to rearticulation.
To wit: I think there's a certain Whiggishness at work here, and rightfully so. LA of Noire is portrayed in all the glory of its expanse, after all, 1940s LA affluence and vastness took countless untolds out of the slums of the East. Its portrayal here is at the same time a revisionist history, in that LA's skies are rendered blue and her streets rasterized as nearly empty. I have not, of course, touched on the whole "1947 LA is thick with serial killers and corruption" history, because I did not technically play the game. From perusing the R* site, seems like they've an angle as regards the Jeanne French killing. As "crime buff" falls under the umbrella of social historian, I have come to know, and from there have become close to, Jeanne French. Not Ellroy/Short close, but, still, don't like to see her memory played with. The women for whom I have a particular affinity — Trelstad and Mondragon and of course my comrade Evelyn Winters — how, if at all, will they be fictionalized in this game?
Obviously, I want the world of 1947 treated with some respect. Noire's designers did a commendable job, and were not lazy in attempting to achieve great things. But let me have a parting shot at this "perfectly recreated" business — the pundits routinely repeat it. I expect lazy journalism. But let's say 1947 LA was perfectly recreated. By whom? Obviously not by someone with phenomenological understanding of the time and place (though such folk do exist, they are now really rather unreliable, God bless 'em) so it must therefore be done by historians…many of whom I know, none I which were ever contacted. Personally, I've never been to the past, nor have the game's designers or builders, or scripters. Therefore LA Noire has an enormous burden to bear regarding its legacy — and if they'd worked on it another five years, would they reach a level of accuracy that would be acceptable to me? Even if I gave it an A-1 rating, wouldn't some upstart still pick it apart?
Noire, I'm assuming, will be an international success. The upside being it will introduce the public to a world they may have never considered: e.g., one without computers and cell phones. Will players perceive this as a pro or con? How and why might they reinterpret their present via time spent in the past? We may romanticize the past, but nothing's sugar-coated in noir. Murder is one thing; it's eternal. 1947's specific relationship to race and gender and class is something else altogether, and what players take away from living in that world, for however short a spell, will be telling. Heck, would it be cooler to play the game wth a case of typhoid or TB? One can only hope the millions who navigate this new (old) world take from it something useful and interesting. (Maybe they'll even go and investigate some old noir thereby freeing up a seat for a good movie.)
But here's the thing. I teach people the past. And now, along comes the best flight simulator I've ever seen. So is it better that LA Noire exists in its imperfect form than to not exist at all? I suppose so, since, as a young man it was beat into me that the cacotechny was part of the flux of art. And yet one can argue that producing something this good, this complex, with such problems, should not have been done. It raises too many philosophical issues, none of which I'm prepared to discuss, and likewise too many architectural issues, all of which I'm hot to discuss.
Which, unfortunately for both of us, dear reader, I will now have to do. As in, I just totally Amazon'd a PS3 (whatever that may be) and a 60″ flatscreen, just like they had in that there Roosevelt hotel room. And I have the sneaking suspicion that I'm going to spend the majority of these forthcoming lovely spring days, when a boy's heart turns to romance, holed up in my TV room, shooting people in the face and driving an Olds up those Second Street stairs, whether they existed in real life or not.
It begins.
Reserve to take Nathan Marsak's free downtown L.A. Noire walking tour on May 29. Details here.


text:
View Your Special Offer
Please enter the 8-digit Unique Offer Code, along with the last name and ZIP code/postal code of the person the offer was addressed to.
All offers are nontransferable.
If you prefer to book by phone, call (866) 285-1959† or call your travel agent.
†Guests under age 18 must have parent or guardian permission to call.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Create a Website Account - Manage notification subscriptions, save form progress and more.
The Concord Police Department established the School Resource Officer position in the Fall of 2000. The School Resource Officer (SRO) is a veteran sworn police officer, a member of the Criminal Investigations Division of the police department. The SRO is assigned to the Concord Public Schools and Concord-Carlisle High School, serving a population of over 1,500 students and their families, as well as the staff, faculty and administration of each building.
The SRO serves as teacher, counselor, role model, and advocate for students, families, faculty and staff. The SRO is not the school disciplinarian, nor does he/she supplant any other staff function. The SRO brings full service, personalized policing to an important segment of our community. With a full-time presence in the schools, he/she is an easily recognized and approachable resource for students. In the classroom, the SRO presents classes on topics such as the history of law enforcement, search and seizure, constitutional rights, criminal law, and drug abuse.
The School Resource Officer's duties extend far beyond the classroom and normal work day. The officer participates in PTO and faculty meetings, club projects, student social functions and sporting events. The SROs presence demonstrates the officer's commitment to the students and tends to strengthen the student/police bond. This also demonstrates the police department's willingness to go beyond the normal tour of duty for the safety and interest of the students.
The ultimate goal of an SRO program is to maintain and improve the safety of the learning environment in our schools through the reduction and prevention of school violence and drug abuse. While the SRO's primary focus is prevention and deterrence, the SRO conducts all criminal investigations on campus, coordinating his activities with the building administrator. Although under the direct supervision of the Police Department, the SRO is considered a member of the school faculty and as such, works closely with the principal and vice-principal to determine the best course of action


text:
Maleficent, Voldemort, and Gordon Gekko: The Secret to a Good Villain Name
In reimagining the 1959 film Sleeping Beauty, Disney had a great tool in their arsenal: the classic villain name "Maleficent," now elevated to title character. And while Angelina Jolie's portrayal in the reboot calls into question just how villainous she really is, there is no question that the creators of the original film chose wisely when naming this "mistress of all evil."
Before Disney got hold of the word, "maleficent" was a highfalutin adjective meaning "causing harm," the opposite of "beneficent." Even if you were not quite sure what it meant, you would know from the "mal-" prefix that it was up to no good, in the same wicked family as "malignant," "malevolent," and "malicious."
"Maleficent" resonates with all of those "mal-" words, but it also echoes "magnificent," befitting a grand character who is not to be trifled with. And it also sounds like a plausible woman's name, not too far off from "Millicent."
If you think about the memorable names of villains in movies, you'll notice many plays of association like this, drawing on words from the shady corners of the lexicon. As a linguist, I'm always impressed by how writers devise truly evocative evil names by building on connotations with pre-existing words.
In the pantheon of Disney villains, the closest point of comparison to Maleficent is Cruella de Vil from 101 Dalmatians. Dodie Smith, author of the 1956 novel on which the film was based, came up with the name by transforming "cruel devil" into something appropriately feminine and aristocratic-sounding.
Sometimes the connotations are in your face: When Oliver Stone presented us with Gordon Gekko in Wall Street, audiences knew from the get-go that this was one slimy, reptilian character. (Coming full circle, herpetologists have named an Indonesian gecko in his honor: Cyrtodactylus gordongekkoi.) Animalistic overtones can be more subtle, though, as in Anton Chigurh from No Country for Old Men, whose last name is pronounced "shi-GUR" but brings to mind the pestilent "chigger."
"Darth Vader" also works subtly, the first name evoking "dark" and "death," and the second name suggesting "invader." George Lucas would later claim that the origin was simple: "'Darth' is a variation of 'dark.' And 'Vader' is a variation of 'father.' So it's basically 'Dark Father.'" But Star Wars fans see that as a clever bit of "retroactive continuity," since the name evidently came before Lucas had worked out the "Luke, I am your father" storyline.
A single homonym or near-homonym may be enough to trigger a foreboding feeling, as in the wretched Nurse Ratched from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, or Hannibal from The Silence of the Lambs, whose name is just a consonant away from "cannibal."
Other times the associations are buried more deeply in the names. Bram Stoker adapted "Dracula" from an epithet for the Romanian prince Vlad II, known as "Vlad Dracul" or "Vlad the Dragon," and his son, the bloody Vlad the Impaler. Those same draconian roots can be heard in such names as Ivan Drago of Rocky IV and Draco Malfoy of the Harry Potter series.
The main Harry Potter villain, of course, has a name so potent that wizards called him He Who Must Not Be Named: Lord Voldemort. In the books and movies, the name seems to be an accidental creation: as a teenager, Tom Marvolo Riddle rearranges the letters of his name to form "I am Lord Voldemort." But the resulting epithet is anything but arbitrary: J.K. Rowling, a former French teacher, surely knew that "vol de mort" roughly translates from French as "flight of death." In fact, Rowling intended "Voldemort" to be pronounced with a silent "t" as if it were French, but the moviemakers changed it — all the better to hear the "mort" element (from Latin "mors"), which we associate with such deathly words as "mortality," "mortuary," and "rigor mortis."
J.R.R. Tolkien, for his part, took the task of naming characters in the Middle-earth saga more seriously, and his wordplay was the kind only a scholar of ancient languages could appreciate. He explained that the name of "Smaug," the evil dragon in The Hobbit, was nothing more than "a low philological jest," formed from the past tense of an old Germanic verb meaning "creep" or "crawl." Those arcane roots are lost on modern moviegoing audiences, who might hear in the name something pernicious that Tolkien never dreamed of: "smog"!
While Tolkien enjoyed plumbing the depths of old Germanic tongues, modern movie villains are often given German-sounding names simply because they fit cultural stereotypes: think of Hans Gruber from Die Hard, or Dr. Szell from Marathon Man. More impressive to me is when the name itself, regardless of stereotypical baggage, can do the work of making audiences uneasy. And that is why a name like "Maleficent" works so well for a magnificent malefactor.
Ben Zimmer is the executive producer of Vocabulary.com and the language columnist for the Wall Street Journal.


text:
Girl swings on rope swing in risk averse playground called The Land on Plas Madoc Estate, Ruabon, Wrexham, Wales. The girl uses the swing and young people are encouraged to push their personal limits in a way that parents are nowadays scared to allow. But here in this council play park, children are encouraged to experiment with risk aversion, to enjoy a wilder form of play and interaction with others - the opposite of online relations and over safe childhoods. From the chapter entitled 'Playing with Fire' from the book 'Risk Wise: Nine Everyday Adventures' by Polly Morland (Allianz, The School of Life, Profile Books, 2015).
Add to Cart Add to Lightbox Download


text:
Is there any difference between the word "complemento" and "suplemento"? Do they really have the exact same meaning?. RAE (Real Academia Española) defines both as:
Cosa o accidente que se añade a otra cosa para hacerla íntegra o perfecta.
But I've seen them been used as having different meanings. For instance, in a drugstore you can ask for a "Complemento Alimenticio" or a "Suplemento Alimenticio".


text:
Order Inductions at St. George Church + Troy, MI
On Sunday, October 20th, 2013, His Eminence Metropolitan Philip inducted several new members into the Order of St. Ignatius during the 100th anniversary celebrations at St. George Church in Troy, Michigan. Shown in the photo, from left to right: Raina Khalife, Sue Hajal, Dr. Simon Katrib, Rita Fakhouri, Metropolitan Philip, Awni Fakhouri, Fr. Joseph Antypas, Anita Pollock, Ziad Fakhoury, Fr. Ayman Kfouf, Christine Antypas Valijan, Dolla Khalife, Fadia Mokbel Shedid, Dr. Mitchel Salhany.


text:
Naharak Saied Program - Chanel 1 - TV Interview March 2013
Egyptian "SSCC" has been selected as one of the semi-finalist teams for this year's
MIT Enterprise Forum Arab Start-up Competition for the Ideas Track'
Egyptian "SSCC" has been selected as one of the semi-finalist teams for this year's
MIT Enterprise Forum Arab Start-up Competition for the Ideas Track'
SSCC (Sinai Sustainability Cybernetics Center) is an IMS project that applies a multiple educational program related to the original natural self-healing system of life on earth. Education, sustainable development, social justice disciplines interact in a causal circular relationship that education would contribute to the development of the local community in Sinai village, on both sustainability and social responsibility levels while the community itself provides a unique learning environment that will contribute to the development of the educational program in a closed signaling loop.
InspirationGihan Soliman has been working closely since 2008 with several parties as an educational consultant and a social activist on relating education to sustainable development, citizenship and global citizenship in Egypt. Through several initiatives and discussions with the stakeholders in Egypt and the international community on education for sustainable development, and throughout her journey with educational reform venture in Egypt, she pointed out the compelling need to integrate sciences and technology to reach quality education.
Four years later, she met Maged Alsaid owner of Habiba Camp who has been working on sustainability in South Sinai through Woofing in Egypt and Dr.Waleed Sadek, an economic advisor and a social activist. She thought they are the perfect partners she's looking to collaborate with on such a project while inspiring others around the world through their wide networks. In short, they developed together the initial agreements and a work plan.
Problem & Project
SSCC aims at boosting a continuously developing community in South Sinai which has been depending only on the regular kind of tourism which harms the environment and the cultural heritage. Regular kind of tourism also is not stable and gets affected by the political situation in Egypt as a boundary zone.
Thus, the educational center will be using the integration of Sciences, Technology, Maths and environmental awareness in providing parallel education for the students in Egypt whether in colleges or schools while promoting agro-tourism as a substitute for the regular tourism in Sinai that affects the natural resources while building a sustainable community based on organic farming, permaculture applications, sea water farming and renewable energy, in addition to the human dimension of solidarity and social responsibility. This will be achieved through partnership with the community and affiliates in Sinai with local and international educational institutions.Nowadays, sustainable development is a tough job ahead of those who are concerned about the future of the world. SSCC is a project that would have a positive impact regarding educational and sustainable development in South Sinai, Egypt while it serves as a model to copy elsewhere around the world.
Find out more about SSCC by:
Watching a video pitch about the project on: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-m5njhkIk7w


text:
Demi Moore Makes First Post-Rehab Appearance
After her publicly exposed meltdown and subsequent stint in a treatment center earlier this year, Demi Moore has remained off the public scene. However, she made her first public appearance in three months on Tuesday night.
Moore attended a party at a private residence in Beverly Hills last night in support of the new show The Conversation, on which the 49-year-old is a producer.
RELATED: Demi Moore Checks into Rehab
The actress, who returned to Twitter earlier this week after a three-month hiatus, asked her followers to suggest a new Twitter handle, as she still goes under "@mrskutcher" despite no longer being married to ex-husband Ashton Kutcher.
"Time for a change, twitter name change... any suggestions?" she wrote on Tuesday night.
RELATED: Demi Moore To Be Treated for 'Exhaustion'
Moore checked out of a treatment center in March after spending a month at the facility following a brief hospitalization to "treat her exhaustion and improve her overall health."


text:
Registration Renewal in Wisconsin
Registration Renewal in Wisconsin
You need to have current license plates in order to legally drive in WI. If your license plates are 10 years old or older or are peeling or defaced you will have to replace them as part of the renewal process. Luckily, the Wisconsin Division of Motor Vehicles (DMV) makes the process easy.
There are several ways to renew your registration. Make sure to do so right away to avoid late fees or penalties for driving without proper registration.
WI Vehicle Registration Renewal Notice
You will receive a vehicle registration renewal notice from the Wisconsin DMV before your car registration expires. Your notice will contain important information about your renewal process, including your expiration date and renewal fee.
Didn't Receive a Renewal Notice?
If you do not receive the notice or if you lose it, you can still renew your registration using your:
- Current registration.
OR - License plate number.
If your registration has expired, you will have to pay a $10 late fee.
Note that it is illegal to drive with expired registration. You may be subject to criminal penalties if found driving without valid registration.
How to Renew Your WI Vehicle Registration
The Wisconsin DMV offers registration renewal:
- Online.
- By mail.
- In person.
Your car may need to pass an emissions inspection before you can renew your car registration. See the "Wisconsin Emissions Inspections" section below for more information.
DID YOU KNOW?: Proof of car insurance may be REQUIRED when renewing your registration!
Compare rates and buy your policy online: Open the Insurance Center >>
Online Registration Renewal in Wisconsin
You can renew your registration online with Wisconsin DMV. An additional convenience fee will be added to your normal registration fee. (See "WI Vehicle Registration Renewal Fees" below.)
To renew online, you'll need:
- The Renewal Reference Number (RRN) from your renewal notice.
- A valid credit card (VISA, MasterCard, American Express, or Discover) to pay the applicable fee.
- (See "WI Vehicle Registration Renewal Fees" below.)
If you did not receive your renewal notice or if you have lost the notice, you can:
- Find your RRN using the DMV's license plate lookup.
OR - Use the Product Number on your current registration certificate.
NOTE: If the RRN is not on your renewal notice and you don't get a result in the license plate lookup, your license plate cannot be renewed online.
Once you have paid your renewal fees you will:
- Print the renewal confirmation and keep it in your vehicle.
- Receive a new Certificate of Vehicle Registration and license plate stickers within 10 business days.
- Contact the DMV to check the status of your order.
By Mail Renewals
To renew your vehicle registration by mail, include:
- Your renewal notice.
- Check or money order made payable to "Registration Fee Trust" for your registration fee.
- (See "WI Vehicle Registration Renewal Fees" below.)
Send your notice and payment to the address shown on your notice.
In Person Car Registration Renewal
You can renew your registration in person at:
You will need your registration renewal notice, as well as payment for your registration fees and service fees. (See "WI Vehicle Registration Renewal Fees" below.)
DMV Service Centers
Wisconsin DMV service centers:
- May charge a service fee in addition to your registration fee (see our section on fees below).
- Accept cash, checks, most debit cards, and credit cards (MasterCard, American Express, and Discover).
Third party agencies
When you use a third-party agency, understand that they:
- Can charge a maximum $10 service fee for renewal transactions.
- Accept different forms of payment, depending on location. Make sure to call ahead.
WI Vehicle Registration Renewal Fees
Wisconsin vehicle registration renewal fees and taxes are as follows:
- Registration annual renewal fee for:
- Cars: $85.
- Electric cars: $175 (only applies to motor vehicles propelled solely by electrical energy).
- Trucks:
- 4500 lbs. and under: $75.
- 6,000 lbs. and under: $84.
- 8,000 lbs. and under: $106.
- Motorcycles: $23 every 2 years.
- Wheel tax: Varies; applicable only to certain WI counties and municipalities.
- See the DMV's page on wheel taxes for a complete list of counties/municipalities that assess the tax during registration renewal and their corresponding wheel taxes.
- Additional service fees for renewing:
- Online: Convenience fee (a percentage of the total fees paid).
- Third-party agency: $10 maximum fee.
- License plate replacement fee: $8.
(No additional fees are required for renewal by mail.)
Accepted Methods of Payment
Your method of payment will depend upon your method of renewal:
- Online: Use a valid credit card (VISA, MasterCard, American Express, or Discover).
- By mail: Pay by check or money order made payable to "Registration Fee Trust".
- In person at a DMV Service Center: Pay by cash, check, or major credit/debit card.
- In person at a third-party agency: Accepted forms of payment vary, depending on location. Make sure to call ahead.
Military Member Registration Renewal
Wisconsin residents who are active-duty military are required to renew their registration even if they are stationed out of state. You can renew online or by mail during your absence.
You can ask someone else to complete your vehicle registration renewal for you. Make sure that your designated person explains that you are on active duty. They will need your renewal notice or current registration card, plus payment for your fee.
Wisconsin Emissions Inspections
The Wisconsin DMV requires periodic emissions inspections. Required inspections are noted on the renewal notification.
The following counties require emissions inspections:
- Kenosha.
- Milwaukee.
- Ozaukee.
- Racine.
- Sheboygan.
- Washington.
- Waukesha.
A car is also required to pass an emissions test after:
- Transfer of ownership (must be completed within 45 days of the transfer UNLESS a test was performed within 180 days before the transfer).
- First Wisconsin registration.
If you are required to have an emissions test, you must do so within 180 days of your registration's expiration date.
For further details about emissions tests in Wisconsin, please see our guide to WI vehicle inspections.
Duplicate Registration or License Plate
If your Wisconsin registration or license plate is stolen, lost, or damaged, you can request a replacement from the WI DMV.
Replace Your Certificate of Registration
Duplicate certificates of registration can be requested:
- Online.
- By mail.
You can reprint your certificate of registration by completing the Duplicate Certificate of Registration Application online.
NOTE: You MUST be the registered owner, lessee, or driver of the vehicle to use the online application. Only individual drivers, not businesses, may use this system.
You will need:
- A printer to print a copy of your registration certificate.
- Adobe Acrobat Reader to view the PDF of your certificate.
- You must print your certificate. The DMV will not mail it.
- A form of payment:
- Major credit or debit card.
- E-check: Have your checking or savings account information ready.
- A valid e-mail address.
- Wisconsin driver's license or ID number.
- Last four digits of your Social Security number.
- Your date of birth.
- The VIN of the car that you need a duplicate registration for.
The fee for a duplicate registration is $2, plus an online convenience fee.
By Mail
To request a duplicate registration by mail, you will need:
- A completed Duplicate Certificate of Registration Application (MV2026).
- A check payable to "Registration Fee Trust" for $2.
Send the application and payment to the address on the form.
Request a New License Plate
New license plates must be requested by mail.
Non-Personalized Plates
To request replacement plates, you will need:
- A completed Replacement License Plate Application (MV2118).
- A check or money order payable to "Registration Fee Trust."
- Fees are listed on the form.
Send the application and payment to:
Wisconsin Department of Transportation
P.O. Box 7949
Madison, WI 53705
You will get a new license plate number, so the DMV will also send you a new registration certificate* as well. The new license plates can take up to 2 weeks to arrive by mail.
*New registration certificates are not issued to drivers replacing personalized plates. (See below for more information.)
Personalized License Plates
Take the same steps to order your personalized replacement plates as those for regular plates (see above).
Because you will not be issued a new license plate number, you will not receive a new registration certificate.
NOTE: If your personalized license plate was reported as STOLEN, send your Replacement License Plate Application (MV2118) to:
Wisconsin Department of Transportation
Special Plates Unit
P.O. Box 7911
Madison, WI 53707


text:
Nov. 30 (Bloomberg) — Japan's plans for containing nuclear accidents are "completely inadequate" and haven't been updated nearly nine months after the disaster at Fukushima, Greenpeace International said.
Government maps simulating a reactor meltdown project a release of low-level radiation only as far as 10 kilometers (6.2 miles), the environmental group said in a statement yesterday. The bulk of radioactive contamination extends as far as 30 kilometers from the leaking Fukushima plant, according to Japan's science ministry. Some areas may be uninhabitable for decades, government officials have said.
Continue reading at Japan Nuclear Accident Plans Still 'Inadequate,' Greenpeace Says


text: DIY, Gifts, My Work, The M Challenge How to Make DIY Mojito Bath Salts What better way to focus on beauty than with a pampering bath salts recipe? Let's celebrate this M Challenge repost of an earlier DIY project by making up a batch and use it today in a relaxing bath – preferably with a glass of wine! How to Make Mojito Bath Salts These Mojito bath salts incorporate everything we love in a delicious mojito drink, with lots of fresh lime and mint. To really increase the mint component in these, we are adding a little mint essential oil to the mix. It's easy to mix up an easy batch of Mojito Bath Salts that you can create with just a few items from your local grocer and craft store and makes a great addition to your beauty routine as well as a welcome handmade gift for the women in your life! Supplies Needed 4 cups of Epsom Salt 2 limes, zest & juice 5-8 drops of mint essential oils (you can add more or less, depending on your preference) 2-4 tablespoons fresh mint, finely chopped Soap colorant in green (optional) Glass Container or Jar Have you ever made your own bath salts? It's the kind of gift (or just for you!) that sounds really impressive, but you don't have to have any craft skills at all to create it. Epsom salts are the key ingredient in these and can be found at your local grocer or drugstore. The wonders of Epsom salts have been well known for hundreds of years and are said to have beneficial properties that can soothe the body. Some of the countless health benefits include relaxing the nervous system, curing skin problems, soothing back pain and aching limbs, easing muscle strain, healing cuts, treating cold and congestion, and drawing toxins from the body. The best part though is that these are inexpensive to buy and can be customized with your favorite ingredients, whether it be mint, lavender, eucalyptus, or any other essential oils that you might have on hand. When purchasing these ingredients for this recipe, avoid any that have added ingredients or scents and just stick to the basic Epsom salts so the scents don't overpower the essential oils that you are adding. How to Make Mojito Bath Salts 1. Pour four cups of Epsom salts in a large mixing bowl. 2. Add the zest and juice of two limes to your bowl. 3. Finely chop your mint and add these to your bowl. 4. Add 5-8 drops of essential oils. You can also add a small amount of green soap colorant, if you would like, to add a little color to your salts. 5. Mix the ingredients well and scoop into a glass jar. 6. Directions for use: Add ½ cup of Mojito Bath Salts to your bath. Have you ever made bath salts before? What is your favorite recipe for these? Pin It Published July 23, 2015 by: Amy Allen Clark is the founder of MomAdvice.com. You can read all about her here.


text:
Capacitive touch plants
Here's a proof of concept for using plants as a capacitive touch sensor. The sensor is simply a hunk of double-sided copper clad board attached to a microcontroller. But it seems to be able to sense what part of the plant is being touched. [Thanks Fabien]
Adding wireless charging to a Nokia N900
This hack is quite common, but it's still fun to see what hardware is being outfitted with an inductive charger. This time it's a Nokia N900 that's ditching the charging cables.
Wii carrying suitcase from a plastic tackle box
This Wii carrying case (translated) looks great and cost just a few bucks. It started as a tackle box for carrying around your fishing lures. But a bit of creative cutting and there's a place for everything.
Browser based schematic and board layout
There's a new kid on the block when it comes to circuit design. Circuits.io offers in-brower schematic design and board artwork layout. [Thanks ADIDAIllinie (and a few others)]
Halloween rapidly approaches and we hope that [Tim's] carving of Bender in a pumpkin will inspire you to send in your own Halloween projects.


text:
JERSEY CITY – Mayor Jerramiah T. Healy announced Tuesday that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) will open a disaster recovery center in Jersey City at the Jersey City Museum, 350 Montgomery St., which is also the site of administrative offices for Jersey City Medical Center. The center will be open daily from 8 a.m. until 8 p.m. Residents do not need an appointment, and will be able get assistance from FEMA and file claims.
FEMA set up a similar recovery center several days ago in Hoboken, which was also hit hard by Hurricane Sandy.
When visiting the FEMA Disaster Recovery Center, residents should bring the following items: Social Security Number or card, including that of their spouses; the full address of the damaged property; directions to the damaged home or property; full contact information; bank account information if you want disaster assistance funds deposited directly.
Over the weekend, senior officials from FEMA took a tour of several Jersey City neighborhoods hardest hit by Hurricane Sandy and released information regarding how residents can begin to apply for relief funds from the federal government.
John O. Brennan, deputy national security advisor and special aide to President Obama, toured Country Village and areas of downtown Jersey City, two communities in which many residents experienced devastating flood damage to their homes and lost furniture, appliances, electronics, and other valuables. Brennan was accompanied by Robert Fenton, FEMA's assistant administrator for response.
"FEMA checks are already being sent out. We're doing inspections right now of individuals' homes. The process is, someone has to phone in and register.
Once they register it usually takes a couple days to get an inspector out to look at the residence. And then maybe four or five days to process [the claim] if all the information is together," Fenton explained to the Reporter on Saturday. – E. Assata Wright


text:
Free Next Day Delivery on Orders Over $100!
Remanufactured Lexmark C540 Black Toner Cartridge. 2,500 Pages
Please Note: Deliveries to Western Australia may take up to 5 business days
Thriftyink's compatible Lexmark cartridges are specially formulated to deliver outstanding printing results and reliability. We stand by our cartridges with a no questions asked, 100% money back guarantee if you're not completely satisfied. In the unlikely event that you do have any problems with your cartridges, just give us a call or send us an email and we'll do our very best to sort it out for you.
Image is for illustrative purposes only, and may not correspond with the actual product.


text:
Some 5,000 French Jews participated in an aliyah fair in Paris.
The fair, organized and run by the Jewish Agency, took place Sunday as French voters went to the polls and elected Francois Hollande as their new president, beating incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy, considered the favored choice in the Jewish community.
"I cannot recall having seen such a massive number of people interested in aliyah since the days when lines of people stretched out of the Israeli embassy in Moscow," said Jewish Agency Chairman Natan Sharansky, who attended the fair. The annual fair usually attracts about 2,000 visitors, according to the Jewish Agency.
A new survey conducted in March, of the 500,000-member French Jewish community, the second largest in the Diaspora, found that French Jews have grown so disgusted with anti-Semitism that more than one quarter of them are considering emigrating.
The poll was conducted by The Israel Project, which previously measured American attitudes about Jews and Israel in order to produce pro-Israel ads.
According to the poll, 26 percent of those surveyed said they have considered emigrating due to worsening French anti-Semitism.
Of them, 13 percent are "seriously" considering leaving, according to Washington pollster Stan Greenberg, who led the surveys and focus groups.
The mood among French Jews is like a "severe depression," said Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi, a founder of The Israel Project.
According to Ynet, official results show that 92.8% of French nationals residing in Israel (9,186) voted for Sarkozy.
The fair in Paris came on the heels of an attack on a Jewish school in Toulouse in which a rabbi and his two young sons and the daughter of the head of the school were killed.
On a visit Monday to Toulouse, Sharansky said the Jewish Agency and the Israel Trauma Coalition will send counselors to the Ozar Hatorah school from Israel in the coming days, followed by a delegation of Israeli youth counselors. The professionals are charged with helping the students and their parents, as well as the teaching staff, return to their normal routine following the March attack.
"I came to Toulouse in order to strengthen the children and the community, but also to remind them that the Jewish Agency will strengthen their connection to Israel and assist those who are interested in making aliyah," said Sharansky, though he added that aliyah should not be based solely on a tragedy like the one in Toulouse.
JTA reports were used in this article.


text:
Ringmore is a small attractive village situated at the head of a valley with fine views to Bigbury Bay and Ayrmer Cove, with its secluded beach and stunning cliffs. It has a thriving and active population of two hundred and thirty.
Three different paths lead down to Ayrmer Cove from the village and connect with the South West Coastal Path. Footpaths lead to Challaborough Bay and to the golden sandy beaches of Bigbury on Sea, from which Burgh Island is reached by the famous Sea Tractor. The island is was also used as a setting by the novelist Agatha Christie.
Ringmore has a long history of habitation and is recorded in the Domesday Book as Reimore. Many of the houses and cottages are thatched, some dating from the 17th century. The Church of All Hallows dates from the 13th century, as does the Journeys End Inn, previously the New Inn, which may have served the workers building the church.
The village is quietly located away from main roads, yet is only 7 miles from the market town of Kingsbridge, 5 miles from Modbury, and 16 miles from the city of Plymouth.
The Ringmore Historical Society was founded in 1984 by a group of residents keen to research and record the history of the village. The society holds monthly meetings during the winter. Over the years the society has gathered a large archive of documents and photographs. With the aid of a Heritage Lottery grant, equipment has been purchased to scan material and to record people's memories.
- Torlington [Kingston & Ringmore]
- Vicarage Farm [Kingston & Ringmore]
- South Langston [Kingston & Ringmore]


text:
Kagemusha (Blu-ray Review)
Akira KurosawaRelease Date(s)
1980 (August 18, 2009)Studio(s)
Toho/20th Century Fox (Criterion - Spine #267)- Film/Program Grade: A
- Video Grade: B+
- Audio Grade: B-
- Extras Grade: A
Akira Kurosawa's Kagemusha was five years in the making after Dersu Uzala appeared in 1975. The latter had had only modest success and Kurosawa's home studio, Toho, being in financial decline at the time, had reservations about committing the large resources needed for the epic film that he envisioned in Kagemusha. Only through the support of American directors George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola who arranged for 20th Century Fox's backing was filming finally possible. In the meantime, Kurosawa had busied himself preparing numerous sketches and paintings of the images he wished to commit to film as part of the Kagemusha project. Thus when filming could finally go ahead in 1979, Kurosawa had virtually the entire project mapped out in his head and this sense of both the overall picture and its details probably allowed the project to get completed despite numerous filming delays and difficulties involving both cast and crew.
Inspired by the history of 16th century Japan in which a powerful warlord used a double to confuse his opponents, the film tells the story of peasant thief Kagemusha who is called upon to impersonate the warlord Shingen who has secretly been killed. The thief is reluctant at first, but he warms to the task as he realizes its importance. His personal ambition grows, but at the same time he becomes haunted by the warlord's spirit. It's a balance that becomes increasingly difficult for Kagemusha to maintain, especially when the actions of opposing factions seem likely to lead him into war.
Kagemusha is a dark epic – colorful in execution but dark in tone – that shows Kurosawa's mastery of both large-scale battle sequences and more intimate expository passages. In the latter, Kurosawa shows great restraint in developing scenes slowly and methodically, which allows the audience to appreciate more fully the weight of the uncertainties and pressures on the Kagemusha character and eventual mental demons that torment him. The battle sequences are impressively mounted, but as effective for what we don't see as what we do. Showing the reaction of onlookers instead of the actual event is nothing especially new, but it is much more effective and even more horrific than viewing an orgy of blood-letting that typically just numbs the senses.
The Kagemusha character is played with considerable sensitivity by Tatsuya Nakadai, a reliable Japanese star. He was not Kurosawa's first choice – that being Shintarô Katsu who was well-known for his playing of Zatoichi, the blind samurai warrior – but Katsu and Kurosawa had a disagreement that led to Katsu's dismissal before shooting had hardly begun. It has been speculated that Katsu might have leant a lighter tone to the central character giving the film a different feel overall. I suspect the difference in practice would have been slight given how detailed an image of what he wanted to accomplish Kurosawa had in his mind, after the many years of preparation.
When released in 1980, Kagemusha shared the Palme D'Or at the Cannes Film Festival with All That Jazz. It received two Oscar nominations including Best Foreign Language Film, but did not win.
Criterion's 1.85:1 Blu-ray release delivers the same 180-minute international release version as the previous 2005 special edition DVD. It is a considerable improvement over the DVD, however, offering vivid colour and a sharp, well-detailed image. Blacks are very deep and contrast is impressive. Some of the night-time scenes seem a little murky in comparison to the rest, but the overall impact is very positive. Moderate grain is evident and there's no sign of untoward digital manipulation.
The lossless DTS-HD Master Audio is a 4.0 mix that sounds quite robust, with some decent use of the surrounds. The Japanese dialogue sounds clear, and hiss and crackle is virtually absent. The optional English subtitles are effective without being intrusive.
The disc supplements included here are a direct port of those on the 2005 DVD, and remain very comprehensive. The only essential differences are that the trailers are now presented in HD, the gallery comparison of gallery of Kurosawa's storyboards to the final film have also been upgraded to HD (and benefit greatly from the added resolution) and the insert booklet is smaller and slightly edited, omitting the Richie biographical sketches. Most impressive is Kurosawa scholar Stephen Prince's audio commentary, that is both richly informative and a pleasure to listen to. The film's production is also thoroughly covered in two featurettes (a 41-minute making-of documentary from Toho's Akira Kurosawa: It Is Wonderful to Create series, and a 19-minute interview piece with George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola). Also included are a 44-minute video that reconstructs the film through Kurosawa's paintings and sketches; a gallery of Kurosawa's own storyboards and their actual recreation on the screen; five Suntory Whisky commercial spots made on the set; three trailers; and a 48-page booklet containing an essay by scholar Peter Grilli, biographical sketches by historian Donald Richie and a Kurosawa interview by critic Tony Rayns. Like the 2005 DVD, the Blu-ray is highly recommended.


text:
Search The Library's Catalog
Enter a search term -- title, author, or subject/keyword -- in the box below and click "search" to find relevant items in The Library's catalog. You can also mix-and-match terms (example: Potter Rowling) to refine your search. After you have done your search you can further limit your results by a number of fields, including the type of material, its location, or availability, by clicking the options to the left.


text:
title:Four Learning Styles
author:Jean Morgan
date_saved:2007-07-25 12:30:09
There are four learning styles that most people fit in to. Visual/verbal, tactile/kinesthetic, visual/non verbal and auditory/verbal. These four learning styles will help you to understand and process any information given to you. Once you know which style you fall in to, you can begin learning the best ways for you to study.
The visual/verbal learning style means that you learn the best from viewing information both visually and in a written format. It works best for you when your instructor uses the blackboard or an overhead projector. If the most important parts of a lecture are put into a bulletin format or used in an outline, you will find it much easier to follow along. Textbook information and class notes will be a great way for you to study and when you're trying to retain information or remember something, you often can "see" it or picture it in your mind.
Of the four learning styles, the visual/verbal person will want to use color coding to help them retain information from books or notes. Highlighters and different colored pens are a great way for this learner to absorb information. Summarizing important information from your notes or textbook is another good way for you to retain what you have learned. This person might also try flashcards, diagrams, illustrations and print-outs to aid in studying.
The second of the four learning styles is visual/non verbal. This person learns best when they are presented with pictures or visual aids. Instructors who incorporate film, videos, maps or diagrams will hold the attention of the visual/verbal learner. You may not find study groups helpful and would prefer to work in a quiet room. If you're trying to remember something, you might picture it in your mind. These learners often tend to be very artistic.
To aid in your retention of information, the visual/non verbal learner should try using flashcards that have important information on them. For the best Maths Tutor In Ireland company, call Ace Solution Books. Illustrating them with pictures and symbols is another good way to help the information to be retained as well as using highlighters and pens.
The third of the four learning styles is tactile/kinesthetic. This learner enjoys "hands on" activities in the classroom. Any type of lab setting or field work will help this type of person to understand the information given. Instructor's that provide their students with demonstrations, presentations or student learning experiences will be helping the tactile/kinesthetic person learn.
Lectures might be hard for this person to sit through, and that's why it's important for them to sit in the front and take notes. Spelling shouldn't be a concern when you're writing notes and you should write down important words you here or draw pictures to depict them.
When you're studying, try incorporating action into it- read when you're on the exercise bike or walk back and forth while reciting information.
The last of the four learning styles is auditory/verbal. The auditory/verbal learner works best when information is given to them in an oral format. Lectures and group discussions work well for you and listening to audio tape information is a good idea too.
To study more efficiently, you might want to join a study group or find a person that you work with every day for a few hours on certain material. Read information out loud and tape record your lectures.


text:
Taiwan Music Writing Group, a collective blog for music commentary, has published a roundup of the music scene in Taiwan in 2013. Here is a collection of 12 of those artists and groups, accompanied by music videos from YouTube.
The most distinctive feature of the year in music coming out of Taiwan was a strong touch of reality, according to the blog:
社會寫實的歌曲同連續不斷的政治議題、政治問題,一口氣爆炸開來!整座台灣島似壓著一股鬱悶,身為樂手,只好寫歌出氣 […]
Countless songs that reflect the social reality of Taiwan have emerged against the backdrop of political debates and problems. The whole Taiwanese island is suffocating with a sense of melancholy and depression. Musicians can only express themselves in music […]
1. Chang Chen-Yue
With the tension between environmental protection and economic development in the east coast of Taiwan, even the playful Chang Chen-Yue presents his Amis origin and sings: I am Ayal komod [Ayal komod is Chang Chen-Yue's indigenous Amis name].
2. Tizzy Bac
想起遊行當天的晚會,也是我第一次聽見Tizzy Bac的新歌<這是因為我們能感到疼痛>,他們想傳達的信念,絕不難
Remember the evening party during the protest [anti-nuclear], that is the first time I heard the new song from Tizzy Bac, "Feel the Pain". Their message is straightforward.
3. Lin Sheng-Xiang
After Lin Sheng-Xiang got all the awards he wanted, he and his band returned to folk rock. Their album "I-Village" almost seems like the autobiography of the lyricist, Yung-Feng Chung. It can be read as a rural sociology textbook.
4. Village Armed Youth
The Village Armed Youth, an activist music band involved in Taiwanese social movements, has suppressed their anger. In their new album, "Where is happiness?", the songs are full of anxiety. What is our future? The future is like a flowing river, and you can't see its end.
5. Softlipa
搖滾之外,更令人驚喜的是嘻哈樂圈,繞舌歌手們能從更另翼的角度切入社會 […] 蛋堡的<仇人的孩子>亦不惶多讓,畫出一幅破碎的家庭圖像,不論中產與底層,這樣的悲劇似乎一直都在都市各個角落裡發生,他的《你所不知道的杜振熙之內部整修》聽來霧氣瀰漫,就像不停雨的台北城,坐在出租房間裡的男子自白。
Apart from rock bands, hip-hop circles are full of excitement. Rappers tell stories about society from another angle. […] Softlipa's "Enemy's Kids" depicts broken families from both the lower class and the middle class. Such tragedies kept happening in the city. His other song, "The Unknown Renovation Inside Du Jen-Shi" sounds foggy, like a man talking to himself in a rented apartment in rainy Taipei city.
6. Ciacia
The 2013 music scene also sees the reemergence of avant-guard singers of the 1980s and 1990s, like Ciacia, who released a new album "She & Me".
7. Sugar Plum Ferry
Sugar Plum Ferry also released a new album, "Hometown of Glitter".
8. Ming-Yu Hsieh
9. Sonic Deadhorse
前有古人回歸,後有來者浮出檯面,他們在音樂元素上,不再留戀於傳統四件式樂器,曲風亦不限於民謠、瞪鞋、後搖、後龐克,更願意結合數位聲響…藏於地下許久的音速死馬(Sonic Deadhorse)終於發行正式專輯,奇情前衛的影音表演,獲得樂評人一致好評。
While the seniors returned to the stage, new faces could not wait to show up. They do not constrain themselves to the conventional four major music instruments, and their music genre is not limited to folk, shoegaze, post-rock, or post-punk. They are more willing to combine digital acoustics in their music […] Sonic Deadhorse has been hidden underground for a long time. They finally issued their new album. The edgy audio-visual performance has very good reviews from music critics.
10. Chiu-Pi
The young artist Chiu-Pi composes his music using an iPad and sings in a simple style a love story, "We Must Love."
11. Baobu Badulu
Baobu Badulu's first album, "Love Taiban", reminds people of the ocean. The acoustic guitar on the album is simply appealing.
12. Fred Van Hove and Shih-Yang Lee
The Music Writing Group's pick for jazz music is Fred Van Hove and Shih-Yang Lee's "Galactic Alignment: Piano Duo Improvisation".
More reviews of Taiwanese albums in 2013 can be found in other articles published on the Music Writing Group: (I), (II), (III), (IV), and (V).
Top World Stories
2 comments
[…] Youth 農村武裝青年 is in Taiwanese (aka "Hoklo") but this short description by Global Voices Online, as well as the tone of the song itself, tells you everything you need to […]
[…] by Village Armed Youth (Chinese) is in Taiwanese (aka "Hoklo") but this short description by Global Voices Online, as well as the tone of the song itself, tells you everything you need to […]


text: The Guardian, November 13, 2012Afghanistan halts Helmand police fuel supplies after major theftOne official estimated its worth at 600m USD (380m GBP)By Emma Graham-Harrison Senior Afghan officials are said to have discovered large-scale theft of fuel in Helmand and halted all deliveries to police in the province, compromising the ability of the force to operate in one of the Taliban's major strongholds. The cost of stolen or "misallocated" fuel in the province is thought to run into hundreds of millions of dollars. One official estimated its worth at $600m (£380m), though a spokesman for the Nato-led coalition said that would be equivalent to the total annual fuel budget for all Afghan security forces. The apparent severity of the authorities' response, halting supplies since the start of November, indicates they considered the theft exceptional even in a country where fraud is rampant. To tackle it, they were willing to leave police without the fuel they needed to patrol one of the most dangerous parts of country, potentially putting security gains there at risk. "There is an investigation still going on, but there was thievery … or at least a misallocation of a huge amount of fuel at the provincial level," said US Marine Captain Devin Blowse, the company commander at Forward Operating Base Delhi in the Garmser district of Helmand. Blowse said senior Afghan government officials were cutting off the Helmand police's fuel until they could stop the problem. "The higher levels in their government are basically cutting them off until the investigation can be completed and they can ensure it's not going to continue to happen," he said. When they heard about the cut-off, marines responsible for training Afghan police units scrambled to fill the gap with Nato fuel. Officially they had stopped providing diesel months earlier, hoping to force the police to strengthen their own supply, but too much was at stake. "You can't just turn off fuel," said Lieutenant Shane Vickers, a logistics expert on the police training team in the district, who asked for a month's supply. "They can't go out on patrol if they don't have any fuel. They can't run their generators, they don't have power," he said. The cost of stolen or "misallocated" fuel in the province is thought to run into hundreds of millions of dollars. One official estimated its worth at $600m (£380m), though a spokesman for the Nato-led coalition said that would be equivalent to the total annual fuel budget for all Afghan security forces. (Photo: Ahmad Nadeem/Reuters) Both the provincial police chief and his top logistics officer confirmed that supplies to Helmand had been temporarily halted, although they denied corruption concerns played any role. Police chief Colonel Abdul Nabi Elham said the cut-off was due to teething problems with new Nato procedures for fuel truck drivers and a new system to calculate fuel allocations, both of which had been resolved. Logistics chief Colonel Torjan said fuel supplies had dried up two months ago and police had been buying diesel with government funds from ordinary gas stations. The stoppage was because Nato worried about the size of the bills. "There is a lot of spending on fuel, that's the reason," he told the Guardian . "They [Nato] said: 'you are using a lot of petrol, more than necessary'. He expected the disagreement to be resolved soon, he said. Without stopgap Nato supplies, police might have been forced to foot fuel bills from their own modest salaries, or be stuck idling in their offices. If such a crisis occurred a year from now when most marines have gone home as part of the phased withdrawal from Afghanistan, the impact on security in Garmsir could be devastating. Blowse has spent his most recent deployment in Afghanistan scaling back Marines' security and logistical support to their Afghan allies, with the informal motto "let them see failure but not achieve it". He reasons that the Afghan security forces need to test their limits while the Marines are providing a safety net, because by this time next year, they are expected to be largely on their own, but says the fuel outage is more than the police can currently manage. "Something has gone critically wrong at the higher levels, so if the aftermath of that is that police in the entire district stop operating for an extended period of time that would be kind of a critical failure that we don't want to allow to happen," he said. "We certainly don't want to make it easy for them to just revert back to using our supplies, but we also don't want a huge setback such as them completely ceasing to operate during a certain time … In my eyes that would be achieving failure." Problems with fuel are unlikely to go away; its scarcity and expense in a landlocked country with poor roads mean it is "like having normal money", according to one logistics officer. It has also attracted corruption, as a US government watchdog has pointed out in a string of reports. The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction warned a few months back that the department of defence cannot accurately account for $1.1bn worth of fuel given to the Afghan National Army over a period of years, and have announced plans to audit police logistics systems for fuel, because they suspect they may be vulnerable to the same problems. "No single commodity is as important to the reconstruction effort in Afghanistan as fuel, and no commodity is at such risk of being stolen or wasted," Special Inspector General John F Sopko was quoted saying in a recent report. "As the US and its coalition allies withdraw and transfer security responsibility to Afghan forces, US funded fuel will become even more vulnerable to waste through corruption and theft." A spokesman for the coalition's regional headquarters in Helmand denied there had been a provincial-level halt in supplies, and said there were no allegations of fraud. "The supply of fuel has not been switched off, I understand there have been delays due to the tightening up of accounting procedures," Lieutenant Colonel Martin Morris said in response to questions. There might be some shortages at the district level because the Ministry of Interior had not approved fuel requests, he added. Additional reporting by Mokhtar Amiri Characters Count: 7087 |


text:
(visited by Rainer Mautz)
24-Oct-2010 -- This report is the last out of a series of five Confluences that I visited during an extended weekend to Morocco. The story starts from 33N 7W.
Despite it was already afternoon on the eve before returning to Switzerland, I thought that a quick investigation on this Confluence was still feasible. When I arrived in Rabat this Sunday afternoon, the streets of Rabat were very busy and the traffic gave me almost a headache. However, I made it to Rabat Harbour, where one can actually find some nice motor yachts that could potentially bring a confluence hunter to his destination (at a beeline distance of 16.5 km). Due to the time of the day and also some hesitation due to missing language skills, I didn't approach a yacht owner with a proposal for a confluence visit.
I drove a bit further along the coastline and went to the nearest point on land at a distance of 8.5 km to the Confluence. The coastline consists of partially rocks, partially beaches, but without any boats, ships, fishermen, or yachts. So the best approach would be to begin investigation at Rabat Harbour.
CP visit details:


text:
Frigates of the Napoleonic Wars
Robert Gardiner
London, Chatham Publishing, 2000; 208pp.
Kings College London
Date accessed: 2 March, 2024
This important new study demonstrates the growing maturity of naval history, for while at first sight it might appear to be aimed at a specialist audience, it skilfully uses a mastery of the specific to enhance our understanding of the general. There has long been a tendency to write the history of ships, individually and collectively, in a way that at the very least implies that the artefact is central, while the human input is peripheral - confusing what is quantifiable with what is important. By contrast this exemplary study, quite the best of its type to appear, situates the frigate in the strategic context of the long war with France, and the shorter, if more alarming War of 1812. Gardiner demonstrates how the design process worked, what factors influenced the key decision-makers, and how experience at sea fed back into the process to create the most effective ships. The ships are assessed using a skilful combination of evidence drawn from the construction drawings, sailing reports and other contemporary evidence. The ships that emerge from this book are intimately linked to their designers, builders and crew. The impact of the individual is everywhere apparent.
Robert Gardiner's two previous books and a number of important articles had already established him as the leading authority on the design and development of the British eighteenth century frigate. This book rounds off an outstanding contribution to naval history, integrating the study of the ship with the broad themes that provide the context. Because the Royal Navy based its strategy on the maintenance of an effective naval and commercial blockade its ships had to be at sea for long periods, in all weathers. Consequently the preferred British frigate designs were tough, durable craft. Their hulls were heavier than equivalent French ships, had greater stowage and tended to be less fine at the extremities. Gardiner shows how the main lines of British frigate policy had been settled by Lord Spencer's Admiralty board in the 1790s, which ordered a marked increase in dimensions. Despite a brief reversion to smaller and older designs by Earl St. Vincent and Lord Barham between 1803 and 1805 it was three designs settled under Spencer's regime that were reproduced in large numbers from 1805 to the mid 1820s. These well-balanced and effective ships, in the hands of skilled officers and crew, were more than equal to any foreign ship of similar rate.
The range of roles in which frigates were employed is examined in the final chapter, and emphasised in an excellent table showing the distribution of ships at intervals throughout the war from 1794 to 1813. These duties included fleet service, conducting strategic and tactical reconnaissance, inshore blockade patrols and combat roles ranging from joining the line of battle to leading coastal bombardments and amphibious operations. Trade protection, convoying, cruising at strategic locations and the sustained pressure of inshore work that were such a feature of the naval war after Trafalgar also exercised the frigate. To meet these demands the ships improved, by design and modification, while the officers and men became more professional, while the best officers tended to reach the prime commands, a reflection of the professionalism of the Admiralty, and a system that rewarded skill, daring, initiative as well as a modicum of well merited good fortune. The best frigate captains of the age, Henry Blackwood, William Parker, Thomas Cochrane, William Hoste and Philip Broke made the best of their ships, but the ships were sufficiently well designed and built that less stellar officers had no trouble executing their duty to the satisfaction of the nation and the navy. As Gardiner concludes, if the ships were good, the men were better.
The old canard that French ships were superior, because they were better 'designed' is given a final and comprehensive refutation. French ships were designed for very different roles, where speed in ideal conditions was valued above seaworthiness, structural strength and the ability to carry the stores and water for sustained cruising. Occasionally a French prize proved useful, if only to show that larger ships had some advantages, but they were costly to maintain, short-lived and although French designs influenced the design of the Leda class the best British frigates of the period, the Lively class were of entirely domestic design. Gardiner demonstrates that when built to the same size British designs met British requirements better than any French equivalent. French designers were better versed in the theory of ship design, but theory was of limited utility when applied to wooden ships driven by sail. The greater sea-going experience available to British designers enabled them to produce better ships.
In drawing the policy background Gardiner stresses the cost of the long wars, the great drain this imposed on key resources, especially seamen, shipyards and timber, and the sustained pursuit of economy in their use. To make more efficient use of scarce seamen the answer was simply to reduce the size and skill levels of the crew, to the extent that American frigates of equal size went to war in 1812 with one quarter more men on board, and a far higher proportion of skilled hands. Such small crews made it well-nigh impossible for British captains to handle their ship under sail and fight the guns at the same time, restricting their tactical options. Against the increasingly inexperienced harbour-confined French ships the resulting rush to engage at close quarters, where superior rate of fire ensured success, was acceptable, but against much larger American ships with more powerful guns and more skilful commanders it proved fatal. However, in the only even match of the War of 1812 HMS Shannon required just eleven minutes to capture the similar USS Chesapeake, in the finest single ship action ever fought. In those eleven minutes Shannon's brilliant captain, Philip Broke laid the foundations of modern naval service. To get the best out of his ship, and its weapons, he had trained his men aim to hit the target, and carry out their duty in silence. Such demands could only be met by long service volunteer ratings, and the gunnery training system he inspired was in place by 1830, ultimately creating the new profession of naval rating.
In examining the design history of this critical warship class a great deal of attention is necessarily given to contemporary naval policy, an area where this book makes a major contribution. While strategic choices had a major influence on procurement decisions, so did the need to spread the burden of construction across as wide a base as possible, bringing into use smaller regional shipyards to reinforce the efforts of the Royal Dockyards and the great Thameside yards that had hitherto built the bulk of Royal Navy warships. Construction also spread to India, to widen the timber resource base, and provide new ships suitable for service in the Eastern arc of Empire. This distribution helped to maintain the fleet at the necessary level, but nothing was so effective in this respect as the capture of enemy ships. Between 1803 and 1813 the Royal Navy captured over 50 large frigates, more than 1/3 of the total acquire dint his period, and an even larger proportion of those available before 1810. Slightly less than 100 new ships were ordered in this period, although not all were completed before the war ended. Some new ships were deliberately built slowly in the Royal Dockyards, from prime English oak, to ensure longevity, while others were quickly assembled from fir and other inferior timbers in commercial shipyards to meet the emergency of the moment. Nowhere was this more apparent than in the response to the shocking loss of three frigates to the Americans in 1812. Such was the capacity of British shipbuilding that one yard at Blackwall could turn out ten frigates in 1813, including six very large ships to three new designs. These new designs demonstrated that the Royal Navy was perfectly capable of building frigates of a more powerful type, but until 1812 had seen no requirement for such costly, units, which sacrificed flexibility and ubiquity for individual power. Even after 1812 the standard class of ships continued to be built in large numbers, down to the late 1820s, because a global maritime empire based on the secure movement of commerce could not afford to build, man or deploy an entire fleet of American style super-frigates. The same lesson would be repeated in succeeding generations, most notably in the inter-war debate on Washington Treaty cruisers.
This policy imperative was reflected in the response to new technology. From 1803 the ship designers strove to find ever more economic ways of using timber, substituting smaller pieces, or iron wherever possible. These efforts were centrally directed, and the successful innovators were well rewarded, notably by financial grants and Royal Society Copley medals. This process culminated in the fundamental reform of ship structure by the Surveyor Sir Robert Seppings, and while this work was vital for the post war enlargement of warships, and the introduction of steam engines, it was actually driven by the need to economise on timber without sacrificing structural strength. This process, which has never been given such a lucid and persuasive treatment, will be of particular interest to historians of technology. Nor was this the only area where the industrial and technical developments of the age affected the frigate. Richard Trevithick pioneered iron water tanks in 1808, replacing the old cumbersome, leaky and unhygienic wooden barrels. Once the manufacturing process had been mastered Henry Maudslay the water tank revolutionised living conditions, by improving the time water could be kept, an the amount that could be stowed, removing the old, foul shingle ballast used to bed down the barrels, and saving money. By 1814 the Navy had over 3,500 large iron water tanks in use. Together with cast iron ballast these tanks allowed ship stowage to be shifted more easily, with a marked impact on sailing qualities.
This is a large and handsomely produced illustrated volume, one which might lead the careless observer to conclude that it was fit only for the 'coffee table'. Nothing could be further from the truth; the illustrations are essential, given the subject and the quality of the treatment. The basic sources for this study are archival, not just the wealth of written evidence but also the almost complete collection of original construction drawings and in service profiles which detail every aspect of the design, construction of the British ships, along with their modification, and that of the captured foreign vessels. Large numbers of these drawings, held by the National Maritime Museum, are reproduced. Often water-stained, heavily amended and modified they provide a vital contact with the design process. They record the working practices by which practical men met pressing problems at a time of national emergency. The drawings are complemented by carefully chosen contemporary images, and both sources are integrated into, and used to expand on the text: as such they make an essential contribution to the overall success of the book. The other contemporary sources are the two surviving British sailing frigates, HMS Trincomalee at Hartlepool and HMS Unicorn at Dundee. These remarkable ships, still afloat despite being close on two hundred years old, can now be seen in context.
Historians of the Napoleonic wars, of naval policy, of technology and ship design are all in Robert Gardiner's debt. This is a work of particular importance.
The author is pleased to accept the review and will not be commenting further due to outstanding commitments.


text:
Guests will soon know the answer to the question "What's in Your Box?" when San Francisco's FK Restaurants & Hospitality debuts its innovative Asian Box concept in Palo Alto, California, in February 2012.
Inspired by Asian street food carts, Asian Box will showcase traditional cooking methods and recipes made with fresh and local ingredients.
Under the direction of Executive Chef Grace Nguyen–formerly of Charles Phan's acclaimed Slanted Door and Out The Door–Asian Box effortlessly fuses Western locavore cuisine with the colorful, flavorful foods found throughout Southeast Asia.
Setting a new bar within the quickly growing fast-casual category of restaurants, Asian Box's menu and facility are completely gluten-free, fulfilling CEO Frank Klein's desire to offer guests an authentic dining experience that is fun, exciting, healthy, and quickly dtam sang, or made to order.
Klein and his partners will open two additional Asian Box locations in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2012.
"I love Asian cuisine but have always found it challenging to find places offering fresh and authentic menus, especially in the fast-casual sector," Klein says. "Asian Box evolved from the idea of the kind of restaurant I'd want to eat at and introduce to my family and friends."
Asian Box's approach is summed up in its playful tagline: "What's in Your Box?" These four words refer not only to the compostable packaging in which the cuisine is served, but also reference the importance of knowing how the food gets to the plate.
"It doesn't matter if you are in a fine-dining restaurant or a grab-and-go shop," Klein says. "More and more, people want to know where their food comes from and how it's being prepared."
Asian Box is not only completely gluten-free; it is also a green restaurant using compostable materials and energy efficient practices.
"It's people-healthy and earth-friendly," says Klein.
Bringing influences from her Vietnamese heritage to the table, Nguyen has worked with FK Restaurants & Hospitality's Culinary Director Chad Newton to craft a menu that focuses on flavor and fresh ingredients with fast execution.
"Quickly served food remains in high demand, but there has been a shift in diner preferences," Nguyen says. "They want food that's raised responsibly, sourced locally, and prepared fresh."
Authenticity is also an important aspect for Nguyen, who learned traditional cooking methods and recipes from her Vietnamese grandmother.
Asian Box's exciting menu offers a variety of tasty options that feature items guests might find at a street cart, while simplifying the ordering process. With menu items starting at $7.25, Asian Box allows guests to create their own "boxes" by selecting from a number of ingredients.
Diners are invited to choose from the Asian Salad, Noodles & Savory Vegetable Broth, Brown Rice Bowl, or White Rice Bowl, and add main events such as Range Raised Coconut Soaked Pork, All Natural Six Spice Marinated Beef, and Cornmeal and Herbed Baked Tofu.
A selection of steamed vegetables, broths, vinegar-soaked peppers, eggs, and more than a dozen complimentary condiments allow guests to create a box based on their preferences and experience a different combination every time they visit.
Housemade condiments include Asian Box Housemade Sriracha, Asian Box Tamarind BBQ Sauce, and Asian Box StreetDust, a top secret blend of exotic herbs and spices.
The crown jewel of housemade sauces for Asian Box is the "HotBoxIt" sauce ($.75), made from California-grown Asian peppers. Nguyen's explosive wok blend of peppers, peppercorns, and chili oils, "HotBoxIt" sauce is not for the timid and is guaranteed to add some fire to the dish.
These sauces, along with Asian Box StreetDust, will be bottled and available in-store, online, and at local retailers.
For guests who want to expand on the traditional boxes, specialty sides include the Shrimp or Tofu Spring Rollwith sweet and sour or spicy red dipping sauce ($1.95); Asian Slaw ($1.95); a selection of pickled vegetables ($1.95); and Dried Fruit and Lemongrass Oil ($2.95).
Asian Box will also offer a selection of housemade artisanal beverages such as Lime Soda with Lemongrass, Thai Iced Tea, and Iced Vietnamese Coffee($2.95). In late 2012, guests will be able to imbibe from a special menu of wines and Asian beers, all of which will be gluten-free.
Located in Palo Alto's Town & Country Village, Asian Box appeals to a broad demographic of diners, from students at nearby Stanford University to corporations and medical centers.
"The partners chose Palo Alto as the first location for many reasons," Klein says.
"The interest by Venture Capitalists in the concept showed that we had struck a chord. The fast-casual segment is on fire and we felt that Palo Alto, the birthplace of so many creative concepts and the center for education and technology, was the right environment in which to change the way people think about Asian food in the U.S."
Designed in partnership with San Francisco's Rubber Design, Asian Box combines the inviting atmosphere of a neighborhood dining spot with the exciting, visual touches of a food cart in a bustling metropolis.
The restaurant's interior is both fun and energetic while comfortable and welcoming. This balance of elements is also reflected in the materials used in construction and design. The dining area is juxtaposed with recycled steel elements, vintage Asian light fixtures, and pressed bamboo along the counters.
Guests can get the feel for eating at a street cart by enjoying Asian Box items at stand-up communal tables or at 25 outdoor seats while listening to the sound of Asian pop music playing from vintage megaphone speakers.
A variety of other cultural elements are utilized throughout the space, including Vietnamese food-related slogans on the walls and doors covered with more than six Asian languages for "enter" and "exit," hand painted in Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and more.
Asian Box in Palo Alto is currently pursuing green restaurant certification from the Green Restaurant Association. For more information, please visit www.asianboxpaloalto.com, www.facebook.com/AsianBoxEats, or follow @AsianBox on Twitter.